2007 Contest University (CTU)
was a big success!

Report from CTU Chairman - Tim Duffy, K3LR

After a year of preparation, 150 students and 11 professors participated in 10 hours of intense Contesting instruction covering some 22 topics, with over 400 pages of text!

Wednesday night the Super Suite opened in the Miami room at the Crowne Plaza in Dayton, Ohio. Early CTU registration started with about 50% of the students checking in that night.

CTU students came from all over the USA and from DX QTHs like DL, YV, G, GU and GD. The youngest student was 9 year old W9JJC! Many experienced ops participated as well.

On the Thursday, we opened the doors to CTU 2007 at 6:30 AM. By 8:00 AM all students were registered and sitting waiting for their first class.

About 50% of the CTU class day was spent with two classes running at the same time (see PDF file of 2007 CTU Class Schedule). The students received all of the printed presentations in a large text book. From 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM eight dual classes were completed. At 10:15 all of the students joined together for seven highly requested class topics which included a “working” lunch and a live K1DG Sprint contest. From 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM eight more “dual” classes were taught, followed up by a 30 minute Question and Answer period. I am pleased to report that all 150 students graduated on time!

I’d like to thank N6BV, K1DG, M0DXR, W9ZRX, N5OT, N5TJ, K8MR, K5ZD, N6AA and N2NT all who were CTU Professors of Contesting and worked many hours preparing the course materials. The CTU Board of Directors are N9JA, K1AR and K1DG. CTU 2007 would have never happened without the help of Ray Novak, N9JA and Icom America. CQ Magazine, DX Engineering and the ARRL all stepped in to help make CTU 2007 a huge success.

Planning and Preparation has already started for Contest University 2008. A full graduate school program will be available for returning CTU students that graduated this year. The 2008 students will get an even better experience because of changes and enhancements to the CTU program.

Stay tuned to the official CTU web site http://www.contestuniversity.com. Make your plans now (including staying Wednesday night in Dayton) to attend CTU 2008 on May 15, 2008. This is the Thursday just before the first day of the big event in Dayton. I know you will enjoy learning about the great sport of Radio Contesting at CTU!